Monday, September 30, 2013

Barack Obama is moving his foreign policy course toward diplomacy and away from military intervention. Suddenly the Iranian nuclear issue and Israeli-Palestinian conflict are back on the table -- but is the Middle East ready for a breakthrough?

The historic moment was carefully choreographed. The foreign ministers of the five permanent member states of the United Nations Security Council, Russia, China, Great Britain, France and the United States, along with Germany, met at 4 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. After 15 minutes the host, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, called Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif into the recently renovated Security Council Chamber. The Iranians shouldn't feel excluded -- but they shouldn't feel too much a part of the global community either.

Battle For Political Power Underway In Afghanistan -- Voice of America

KABUL — Elections for a new president to replace Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan are six months away and the battle for power in the country is heating up. Regional analysts say that powerful political alliances are beginning to form, and the result of the vote will determine whether Afghanistan moves forward or stays mired in long-term conflict.

After decades of war and corruption, Afghanistan is a poor country. The hope is that the April 2014 presidential election will change all that, says Noor Agha.

“We are all tired of war. The next president should work toward peace and improve our lives,” Agha said.

Hamidullah Farooqi, a former transportation minister now part of a political coalition of technocrats, warns of the dangers of a failed election.

My Comment: The elections are slated for April 2014 .... that is when the opium crop is brought in and the Taliban are preparing for their summer fighting season. Will this impact the elections? If I was a betting man I would say yes.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — Participants at a U.N. refugee conference in Geneva are appealing for stronger international support for countries hosting large Syrian refugee populations. They say four neighboring countries of asylum are stretched to the limit.

A U.N. video graphically shows the anguished evolution of Syria’s humanitarian crisis during the past two and one-half years. What began as a series of peaceful protests in March 2011 has developed into a catastrophic situation in which more than 100,000 people have been killed and more than two million Syrians have fled the country.

NAIROBI — Over the past week, Sudan has seen its most serious protests in almost three decades. Demonstrations over rising prices after the government decided to lift fuel subsidies have mutated into riots, and dozens of people have died. The streets have calmed, but analysts say that this could be a turning point for the ruling party and longtime President Omar al-Bashir.

The protests started a week ago in one town, but quickly spread to others and the capital, Khartoum, where protesters torched vehicles, gas stations, police buildings and hurled stones at security forces.

The protests are seen as the greatest challenge to Bashir’s rule since he came to power in a 1989 military coup.

* Chilling photographs show businesses in the Westgate Mall after it was targeted by terrorists last week
* Shopping trolleys were abandoned while customers left purses and bags on cafe tables as they fled the violence
* Shattered glass was left on the ground in an eery reminder of the atrocities which took place at the mall
* 39 people are still missing following the attack, the local Red Cross revealed today

Shopping trolleys abandoned, bags dropped on the floor and beer bottles left where they stand, these haunting images show the shops which were deserted in the aftermath of the Nairobi mall massacre which left 67 people dead and dozens more missing.

Carts full of goods were left standing in Westgate Mall as shoppers fled for their lives when jihadi terrorists rushed the building and started gunning down customers.

The photographs show how people apparently dropped bags on the ground as they made their escape, forming a disturbing portrait of the moment chaos broke out.

WASHINGTON — As the nation’s spy agencies assess the fallout from disclosures about their surveillance programs, some government analysts and senior officials have made a startling finding: the impact of a leaked terrorist plot by Al Qaeda in August has caused more immediate damage to American counterterrorism efforts than the thousands of classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.

Since news reports in early August revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaeda, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an imminent terrorist attack, analysts have detected a sharp drop in the terrorists’ use of a major communications channel that the authorities were monitoring. Since August, senior American officials have been scrambling to find new ways to surveil the electronic messages and conversations of Al Qaeda’s leaders and operatives.

As terrorists increasingly have embraced social media, Twitter has increasingly come under criticism for hosting terror feeds. Al-Shabaab is on it sixth account after getting suspended in the past for tweeting photos of a dead French special ops soldier, and most recently the Somali terror outlet blazed through a few accounts after suspensions for gloating about the Westgate mall massacre. Their latest account, @HSM_PR, has remained active for many days now and has racked up 59 tweets. During the attack and its aftermath, journalists were checking the Shabaab feed for its latest claims and links to statements.

My Comment: I doubt that Twitter's management are happy with terror groups using their platform to promote violence. With tens of millions of users I suspect that Twitter operates automatically .... and so these groups can easily slip in and use their services.

TEHRAN: The commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said Monday that President Hasan Rouhani should have refused to take last week's historic telephone call from US counterpart Barack Obama.

"The president took a firm and appropriate position during his stay" in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, General Mohammad Ali Jafari said in an interview with the Tasnimnews.com website.

"But just as he refused to meet Obama, he should also have refused to speak with him on the telephone and should have waited for concrete action by the United States."

(Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will warn President Barack Obama in White House talks on Monday that Iran's diplomatic "sweet talk" cannot be trusted and will urge him to keep up the pressure to prevent Tehran from being able to make a nuclear bomb.

While Obama will attempt to reassure Netanyahu that he will not act prematurely to ease sanctions on Iran, growing signs of a U.S.-Iranian thaw have rattled Israel and could make for a tense encounter between the two leaders, who have not always seen eye-to-eye on the Iranian nuclear dispute.

Malian Army Clashes With Tuareg Rebels For Second Day In Kidal -- Reuters

(Reuters) - Malian troops clashed with Tuareg rebels in the northern desert town of Kidal for a second day on Monday, residents said, after the separatists ended a ceasefire with the new government last week.

The fighting began late on Sunday afternoon outside a bank in the center of Kidal, with both sides accusing the other of firing first. After calm returned overnight, shooting re-started early on Monday morning.

"The firing began at around 5 o'clock (1 a.m. ET) this morning between the army and the MNLA," said Mohamed Toure, a trader. "I have not opened my shop today."

The clashes are the latest in a series of attacks in recent days that threaten to derail peace efforts and complicate France's plan to reduce its troop presence in the West African country after a military operation to destroy an Islamist enclave.

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to meet on Monday afternoon, allowing itself just hours to reach a compromise with the House of Representatives on a spending bill before a midnight deadline for a partial shutdown of the U.S. government.

Republican lawmakers are insisting that any measure either delays or defunds President Barack Obama's signature health care law intended to provide coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised that a spending bill passed by the House in the early hours of Saturday morning, which would delay key parts of the Affordable Healthcare Act, known as Obamacare, for one year, will not be approved.

UK Becomes First Country To Disclose Plans For Cyber Attack Capability -- Information Age

Ministry of Defence announces plans for cyber "strike capability", making it the first nation state to do so

The UK has become the first country to publicly commit to the aggressive use of cyber attacks to protect national security.

Over the weekend, the Ministry of Defence announced that it is developing a "full-spectrum military cyber capability, including a strike capability, to enhance the UK’s range of military capabilities".

"For years, we have been building a defensive capability to protect ourselves against ... cyber attacks," defence secretary Philip Hammond said in an interview with the Daily Mail. "That is no longer enough."

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, center, greets South Korean President Park Geun-hye at the Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Sept. 30, 2013. The two leaders later met to discuss bilateral defense topics. DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

SEOUL, Sept. 30 (Yonhap) -- South Korean President Park Geun-hye told U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday that Japan should first resolve long-running grievances over its sexual enslavement of Korean women and other colonial-era atrocities if the two neighbors are to build trust and improve ties.

Park made the remark after Hagel talked about the importance of resolving historical problems and other issues between Seoul and Tokyo in order to establish a three-way security cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States, senior presidential secretary Lee Jung-hyun said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, right, and South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin, second from right, stand at the Ouellette Observation Post at the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea, Sept. 30, 2013. DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

Chuck Hagel In South Korea For Military Talks -- BBC

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel is in South Korea for talks, where the eventual transfer of military control to Seoul is expected to be a key issue.

Under the current alliance, the US has operational control over South Korean troops in the event of war.

Seoul was due to resume control in 2015, but appears to want an extension, given ongoing tensions with the North.

The two Koreas remain technically at war as the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice and not a peace treaty.

Mr Hagel, who is visiting South Korea for the first time since becoming defence secretary, said Seoul's military had become "much more sophisticated, much more capable".

"We're constantly re-evaluating each of our roles," he told reporters on Sunday during his flight to Seoul.

Coming to a store near you … Ewan McGregor with a lightsaber in Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith Photograph: Digital work by ILM

Star Wars Lightsabers Finally Invented -- The Guardian

Scientists in America have 'accidentally' found a way forward to the creation of real-life weapons as used by Jedi Knights

Wannabe Jedi Knights rejoice, for scientists have discovered that the famous lightsaber weapon wielded by Luke Skywalker and his ilk in the long-running space opera saga might one day exist beyond the realms of fiction.

Harvard and MIT physicists writing in the new edition of Nature say they have discovered a way to bind photons together in order to form a new molecule which behaves almost exactly like George Lucas's deadly devices.

"Most of the properties of light we know about originate from the fact that photons are massless and do not interact," said Harvard university physics professor Mikhail Lukin. "What we have done is create a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other so strongly that they act as though they have mass, and bind together to form molecules.

The rise in bombings across Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan threatens to match levels of violence not seen since the Iraqi insurgency in the late 2000s.

A rash of car bombs killed dozens across Baghdad on Monday, the latest in a series of deadly bombings that have racked Iraq over the past several days. The violence has brought the country's civilian death toll to its worst level since 2008.

The bombs hit eight different areas on Monday, the deadliest blast tore through a small vegetable market and its car park, killing seven people including two soldiers and wounding sixteen others, a police officer said.

That was followed by four parked car bombs, which went off in quick succession in the neighbourhoods of New Baghdad, Habibiya, Sabaa al-Bour and Kazimiyah - all striking outdoor markets or car parks.

Media reports put the casualty figures at a minimum of 24 dead and 75 wounded to at least 40 killed and more than 170 injured.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A car bomb tore through a centuries-old market in Peshawar on Sunday, killing at least 41 people in the third major attack on the Pakistani city in a week.

The midday explosion at Qissa Khawani Bazaar, or the market of storytellers, damaged dozens of shops and injured more than 100 people. The carnage also included 16 members of an extended family who burned to death in a van, making them the latest symbol of Pakistan’s painful struggle to combat terrorism within its borders.

The market in Peshawar’s old city is not far from All Saints Church, where 85 people were killed a week ago in what is thought to be the worst attack on Christians in Pakistan’s history. That attack was followed by a bus bombing Friday on the outskirts of town that killed 18 government workers rushing home for Friday Muslim prayers.

Has America Abandoned an Afghan Interpreter? -- George Packer, New Yorker

It’s hard to think of anyone more deserving of an American visa than Mohammad Janis Shinwari.

On April 28, 2008, a team of U.S. Army combat advisers left the small base they shared with Afghan troops in Ghazni Province and went out on a mission in Taliban country. Ghazni was then the most violent place in Afghanistan. First Lieutenant Matt Zeller was riding in the second of three vehicles. He had been in Afghanistan for ten days. Zeller’s team had been briefed upon arrival in Afghanistan by Major General Robert Cone, who was in charge of training the Afghan Army and police. “How many of you were in Iraq?” Cone had asked the new arrivals. “This isn’t Iraq. In Iraq, we do everything we must to win. Here, we do everything we can.”

Terrorist Group Al-Qaeda's Twitter Account Has Been Suspended After Only Five Says -- Daily Mail

* The suspension comes less than a week after the account went live
* It also comes only hours after a media report saying Twitter refused to comment Saturday on why the account was still live
* Followers were mostly journalists and curious onlookers

Al-Qaeda's Twitter account has now been suspended.

After going live Tuesday under the guise of its Shamukh al-Islam website, the official website of the terror organization, the @shomokhalislam account was suspended Sunday after just under 50 tweets.

The account’s suspension came only hours after a report critical of Twitter remaining silent as to why it was allowed to remain online for so long

Irish-born terrorist rented a unit in mall for months before attack that left 67 people dead.

THE Irish-born terror chief dubbed the 'White Widow' slipped out of the Kenyan shopping mall after smearing blood over her face, security sources in the country have exclusively told the Sunday Independent.

They also revealed how Samantha Lewthwaite, the Co Down-born widow of London suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay, rented a unit at the Westgate Shopping mall months ago, in preparation for last week's terror killing spree.

She hung up newspapers around the shop unit to conceal what was going on inside, pretending to be stocking up on goods.

My Comment: Future wars will still be fought with bullets and bombs .... but this focus on cyber warfare is not going to be cheap .... and it will be useless against adversaries like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and any other low-tech military groups or organization.

Firms Tout 'Email Made in Germany' as More Secure; Brazil Wants Its Own Servers

Google Inc., Facebook Inc. nd other American technology companies were put on the defensive when Edward Snowden's allegations about U.S.-government surveillance of Internet traffic emerged this spring.

Outside the U.S., some companies and politicians saw an opportunity.

Three of Germany's largest email providers, including partly state-owned Deutsche Telekom AG, DTE.XE -0.28% teamed up to offer a new service, Email Made in Germany. The companies promise that by encrypting email through German servers and hewing to the country's strict privacy laws, U.S. authorities won't easily be able to pry inside. More than a hundred thousand Germans have flocked to the service since it was rolled out in August.

Under armed guard at Sheremetyevo airport in Russia there is £16.75bn in cash stored on wooden pallets

Is Saddam Hussein's Fortune In A Warehouse In Moscow? Mystery Over £16.75bn Piles Of Cash Left At Airport For Six Years -- Daily Mail

* Cash in 100 euro notes is stored on wooden pallets
* Each of the 200 pallets is worth 100million euros
* Money was sent to Moscow from Frankfurt in 2007
* Documents show the sender was a 45-year-old Iranian
* No recipient listed but sources say it could belong to Saddam Hussein
* Other theories are that it belonged to Colonel Gaddafi, a Mafia operation linked to the state, or corrupt officials
* Unsuccessful attempts have been made to claim the fortune that would make the owner richer than Roman Abramovich

A cargo of 20billion euros in cash (£16.75billion) has lain unclaimed at a Moscow airport for six years amid allegations it could be the secret fortune of Saddam Hussein.

The stash, now under high security in a cargo depot, is held on 200 wooden pallets each worth 100 million euros, enough to keep the entire NHS going for almost two months.

Russian customs have demanded the real owner of the booty "presents himself" to claim the fortune, but while a number of bogus and unconvincing attempts have been made to obtain it, no-one has satisfied the authorities that they are the rightful recipient.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s leader is coming to the United States, hoping to counter media and diplomatic appearances by Iran’s new president that seemed to improve ties with the West.

Iran will top the agenda for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the White House on Monday and addresses the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. His visit follows what many commentators called a "charm offensive" in the United States last week by Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani, who is hailed by some in the West as a moderate.

About Me

I have been involved in numerous computer science projects since the 1980s, as well as developing numerous web projects since 1996.
These blogs are a summation of all the information that I read and catalog pertaining to the subjects that interest me.